Wine of the week: Badenhorst The Curator Red 2020

One more South African wine that shows its producers care about value and quality

Several years ago, a South African wine trade group official told me his country needed to premiumize – focus on selling more expensive wines in the U.S.

Boy, am I am glad so many producers in South Africa ignored that advice.

The most recent example is Badenhorst’s The Curator Red 2020 ($12, purchased, 14%), a red blend that has about half cabernet sauvignon and is rounded out with shiraz, cinsault, and grenache. It’s not exactly a Rhone blend knockoff, not with all that cabernet, but the effect is sort of the same: A big wine, with lots of dark fruit (blackberries and almost plums?) and hearty, but not unpleasant, tannins. And, somehow, a little rustic, so no one will confuse it with one of those supermarket red blends that is so smoooth.

In other words, just what we look for on the blog – an everyday wine that offers much more than it costs. It needs food, but that’s not a problem – burgers during the week, barbecue during the weekend, and pizza when you don’t feel like cooking.

Imported by Broadbent Selections